Following a six month long investigation, Pune city police on Thursday filed a chargesheet against developer DS Kulkarni and his wife Hemanti for allegedly cheating thousands of depositors through various investment schemes. The chargesheet has pegged the total volume of fraud at Rs 2,043 crore.

The chargesheet that runs into 36,875 pages, was brought to the court in four vans and submitted to special judge JT Utpat.

The economic offences wing (EOW) headed by deputy commissioner of police Sudhir Hiremath has been investigating the case since October 2017, when the first depositor Jitendra Mulekar (56) approached Shivajinagar police station.

According to the chargesheet over 5,000 depositors who invested in several schemes offered by the DSK Group were duped. Over and above the deposits, the group also took loans from several financial institutions and banks for their real estate projects.

Immediately after the Fir was filed, the Kulkarnis sought anticipatory bail. While their bails were rejected by district sessions court and Bombay High Court, Supreme Court gave them reprieve. They were asked to deposit Rs 50 crores, which the couple, however, could not do.

On February 17 this year, a day after HC rejected their bail plea, the couple was arrested from a hotel in Delhi. The two are now lodged in Yerawada Jail.

Speaking about the case, deputy commissioner of police, Sudhir Hiremath, said, “During the probe it has been revealed that the fraud amount in question has been transferred onto the names of different companies and people. We have submitted documents showing the details of the fraud amount along with the chargesheet.”

On Wednesday, four more persons, who are relatives of DS Kulkarni, were arrested by the EOW. Kedar Vanjpe, Sai Vanjpe, Dhananjay Pachpor and Vinaykumar Badgandi were arrested after their names and their role in the case came to light during the investigation. They were produced in court on Thursday. They have been sent to police custody till May 25. The total number of accused arrested so far has gone up to six so far.

When the four new accused were produced in the court on Thursday, the public prosecutor Pravin Chavan demanded that they be remanded in police custody for 14 days to benefit the investigation. Advocates Harshad Nimbalkar and Prasad Kulkarni represented the accused. The public prosecutor submitted that the arrested accused have played key roles in the Phursungi land fraud matter, where the plots were sold to DS Kulkarni’s public limited company at inflated costs.

“We have seized reports of transactions worth Rs 265 crore. Since this is a large conspiracy, we have seized many more items including the map of land. We are yet to confirm the identity of the bank managers who had given loans to DSK,” the public prosecutor said.

Defence counsel Nimbalkar submitted, “We have maintained the record that all the accused had been called for interrogation time to time by the EOW. All of them have cooperated with the police during the investigation. What new investigations do they want to do now? These people are employees of the DSK firm and are not concerned with the case in any way.”